combinatorial explosion | Glowfic Constellation

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The strangers have six casters, in their group, that Qiri can count. Qiri's group has four counting him, and they got split up awhile ago when the strangers started that earthquake. Qiri is stuck with Master Huo. Master Huo is dying, but since Qiri is chained up he can't use that to escape, or attack Master Huo. The master's magic is uninjured, and he can reach Qiri's from where he lies, and Qiri is sitting there, goosepimpled, enduring it. He wonders if Master Huo might be in enough pain to distract him, if Qiri tried to wrench his magic away, but he doesn't think so. He can squirm around a fair bit under Master Yu and Master Zao if only one of them is using him for a spell - and if he wants to earn himself a beating - but not Huo.

He doesn't get nauseous anymore, like he did when he was a kid. So there's that.

Huo's casting a healing spell, moving Qiri's magic around this way and that to set it up. Qiri assumes it's going to target Master Huo, but spells don't know who anyone is. Qiri can't distract himself, not with his spine tingling and all his magic cringing under the slide of Huo's. Instead he tries to concentrate on something less directly sensory: how's the spell targeting? How is Huo going to make sure it heals him, and not Qiri's irritated skin under where the chains sit, the injuries to his fingers from the last time he irritated Master Yu, the probably broken toe sustained in the earthquake?

He figures it out when the spell is probably almost over: it's going to target the most injured person, and Qiri is a little banged up but Master Huo's got an arrow to the gut and a slice through his thigh that's probably going to bleed him out before the abdominal wound can kill him. It's objectively pretty impressive that he can concentrate enough to make his magic force Qiri's through the motions he wants.

Then, dimly around the cloying sensation of Huo's magic over his, Qiri notices a group of the stranger mages approaching, standing close together, back to back to back, doing something -

And he and Huo are banished somewhere else.

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Sigh. "Okay. Once we've examined this whole situation a little more we can get you some human friends, by the way, humans usually get along better with other humans."

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"Okay."

"I think that's everything. You've been very patient. Thank you."

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"You're welcome."

He leaves.

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Qiri is kind of bored. He does stretches, and then he meditates for lack of any better ideas even though he's terrible at meditating.

He meditates too, if 'trying really hard not to stop your heart' counts, and then tries to get back to work. It's hard to work. He's so distracted.

He keeps one channel of attention on the magic human.

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The magic human meditates until he feels hungry enough to eat lunch, then summons lunch.

Lunch is soup and a sandwich and fried meatball-things and a potato salad, brought by an Elf who doesn't look much older than Qiri.

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"Thank you!"

"Of course! Are you okay?"

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"There's not a lot to do in here but I'm worried I'll get lost if I wander around."

"You could ask one of the guards to go with you, probably. Or I could. Or you could go alone and then ask someone the way back once you were done? I'm not totally sure if you're allowed to do that."

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"I'm not?"

She looks flustered. "I'm not totally sure? If no one said anything then probably it's fine."

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"Nobody said anything. There are guards? If there are guards I'm probably not allowed. Anyway I don't know how I'd ask for directions, you can't have all learned Yisi."

" - Lord Curufin did and then he wrote it up and sent out an update and now anyone who's used a language update before and has the phonemes should be all set. And that's most of us, I mean. This is a Noldorin city."

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"I don't know what most of that means."

"Right. Um. Elves aren't like humans, we have computers in our heads, they do nice things like translation. It takes a little bit of practice to use your computer for translation right, but it's practice that most people have, and once you know how to do it at all you mostly know how to do it for any language if the language contains sounds you know how to pronounce."

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"...what's a computer?"

"Um. It's a little bit of metal with electricity running through it, that can do whatever you want."

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"...whatever you want?"

" - well, it can't kill Melkor. It can talk to people and do translation and play music or movies and tell people where you are and you can explode it if you want to die."

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"- okay."